Pony: You and I are almost totally in agreement.

Zep: The people fighting today weren't alive 65 years ago, what choice did they have? None. Arafat himself was a child or teenager at the time, he had no choice either. I suspect that they turned down the idea of a Palestinian state at the time because they considered the whole of what is now Israel and The West Bank/Gaza Strip to be Palestine and their state. It seems the Brittish promised a lot and delivered little to both sides. Colonialism strikes again.

I think today's intifada happened because people are enraged and it's easy for HAMAS and other extreamist groups to stir people up. Many fragment orgainizations doing their dirty work, Arafat and the PLO trying to keep things under control (yes, I know, sometimes doing almost nothing), and the bulk of the Palestinian people covering their heads and praying for better days. That you simply lump them all into one group and slap the label of "them" on the whole lot is a bad sign.